Christian Kjos, Ditte Marie Bræin & Marianne Beate Kielland
Biography Christian Kjos, Ditte Marie Bræin & Marianne Beate Kielland
Christian Kjos
(b. 1980) is one of Norway’s most active harpsichordists. After studying at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH) in Oslo with Knut Johannessen and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Basel, Switzerland with Jesper Christensen, he has been a freelance harpsichordist and continuo player in several of Norway’s early music ensembles. He has been much involved in artistic matters in Barokkanerne and the Norwegian Baroque Orchestra (from 2018 united as Barokkanerne – Norwegian Baroque Ensemble) and has taken part in several CD recordings with the before mentioned ensembles as well as Trondheim Baroque and Ensemble Cordia in Italy. Christian has played with Concerto Copenhagen under Alfredo Bernardini and is a founding member of the Swiss-based Ensemble Meridiana with whom he has won several first prizes in international early music competitions and released recordings on Linn Classics and Chandos Classics. Christian has been a research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music since 2015 with the artistic research project ‘Releasing the ‘Loudie’, harpsichord accompaniment in the G. F. Handel’s continuo cantatas’. The Norwegian composer and writer Eivind Buene and the Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen has been his supervisors. In the course of the project, Christian has deepened his special relationship with Handel, his music and its performance practical aspects.
Sept. 2019
Marianne Beate Kielland
"Gramophone" writes about Marianne Beate Kielland: «The mezzo-soprano is quite outstanding: strong, firm, sensitive in modulations, imaginative in her treatment of words, with a voice pure in quality, wide in range and unfalteringly true in intonation.»
She is educated from Norwegian Academy of Music, where she studied with Svein Bjørkøy. She has also studied with Oren Brown and Barbara Bonney.
She is one of Scandinavia’s foremost singers, and she regularly appears in the concert halls of Europe, Japan and America with conductors such as: Phillippe Herreweghe, Fabio Biondi, Jordi Savall, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Christophe Rousset, Marc Minkowski, Masaaki Suzuki, Thomas Søndergård, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Thomas Dausgaard, Jos van Immerseel, Manfred Honeck, Daniel Reuss and Christian Eggen.
In 2012 she was US Grammy nominee in "Best Vocal Classical Album» for «Veslemøy Synsk» by Olav Anton Thommessen, and with this and more than 40 other recordings and a wide range of repertoire and performances, she is established as a remarkable interpreter of music from baroque to contemporary era.
Ditte Marie Bræin
The Danish soprano, Ditte Marie Bræin, was born into a musical family from Kristiansund and the surrounding area. She is the daughter of clarinetist Hans Christian Bræin, granddaughter of composer Edvard Fliflet Bræin, great granddaughter of composer / organist / conductor Edvard Bræin and backstage granddaughter of composer / organist Christian Bræin. She received her education at the Norwegian Music School with Svein Bjørkøy and Randi Stene and completed her studies in 2015.
After her studies, Ditte Marie Bræin could have auditioned singing in the Det Norske Solistkor (Director: Grete Pedersen). In 2013 she was already one of the soloists in George Frideric Handel's Messiah at a performance in Moss . Her fame stretches out to Vietnam, where she also sang G.F. Handel's oratorio. On May 17, 2015 (May 17, the national holiday in Norway) she gave a concert in Ålesund, with works by Rikard Nordraak, Ludvig Irgens-Jensen, Edvard Grieg and Edvard Fliflet Bræin. Of the latter, Kantate til Ålesunds 100-års jubileum celebrated her premiere. Her voice can be heard in a work by Per Nørgård (Julens Glæde, Himmelfalden) on BIS Records.
